The Boy with Two Heads

Andy Mulligan is a good writer, and this novel is certainly something different. It begins with pleasant if unremarkable eleven-year-old Richard waking up one day to discover that he is growing a second head. Even worse, this unwished for new arrival, who announces he is to be known as Rikki, turns out to be an aggressive trouble-maker and a racist to boot. Problems soon start piling up, some potentially comic but others darker in tone. There is also an unscrupulous experimental neuro-scientist involved, a weaker fictional figure who eventually leads this story into an unconvincing chase against the odds as Richard-Rikki go on the run rather than put up with ultimately lethal surgical procedures. Some attempt is made to link the second head with Richard’s continual grief over the recent death of his heroic grandfather, but such prolonged and repetitive ancestor-worship soon becomes tedious. Some fine moments, including an Adventure Holiday from hell, cannot in the end compensate for a storyline that eventually becomes muddled and unfocused. But Mulligan not quite in top form is still a better read than many others, particularly in the first half of this extraordinary if ultimately preposterous story.